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Piety is one of the popular virtues, whereas soap and Socialism are two hobbies of the upper middle class. These "healthy" ideals, as they are called, which our politicians and schoolmasters have borrowed from the aristocratic schools and applied to the democratic, are by no means particularly appropriate to an impoverished democracy.
But even thus, such was his flexibility, so little was he in bondage to a mere abstract maxim, that he saw very well that for his purpose itself, of enabling the individual to stand perfect on his own foundations and to do without the State, the action of the State would for long, long years be necessary; and soon after he wrote his book on The Sphere and Duties of Government, Wilhelm von Humboldt became Minister of Education in Prussia, and from his ministry all the great reforms which give the control of Prussian education to the State, the transference of the management of public schools from their old boards of trustees to the State, the obligatory State-examination for schools, the obligatory State-examination for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great State University of Berlin, take their origin.
Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived as they always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect cleverness the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in achieving their aim.
But these rare cases actually do more harm than good; for they encourage us to pretend that all schoolmasters are like that. Of what use is it to us that there are always somewhere two or three teachers of children whose specific genius for their occupation triumphs over our tyrannous system and even finds in it its opportunity?
It was on Latmos, not Ida, that Endymion shepherded his flocks; but that is of no moment, except to schoolmasters.
The few schoolmasters which are found in Italy are not a distinct class, as with us; they are priests, and mostly Jesuits. There are three classes of catechisms used in the schools; the pupil beginning with the lowest, and of course finishing off with the highest. But of what subjects do these catechisms treat?
There are more than one thousand schoolmasters teaching the rising youth of Nova Scotia with the depressing conviction upon their minds that no very elevated walks of ambition are open either to their pupils or their own children. . . . Suppose that, having done my best to draw attention to the claims of those I have the honour to represent, I return to them without hope; how long will high-spirited men endure a position in which their loyalty subjects their mines to monopoly, their fisheries to unnatural competition, and in which cold indifference to public improvement or national security is the only response they meet when they make to the Imperial authorities a proposition calculated to keep alive their national enthusiasm, while developing their internal resources? There is a balance of power in Europe which British diplomacy labours incessantly to maintain.
"I've already decreed large sums for the purchase of supplies," exclaimed his Excellency haughtily, as if to say, "I've done more than I ought to have done." "But since suitable locations are lacking, the supplies purchased get ruined." "Everything can't be done at once," said his Excellency dryly. "The schoolmasters here are doing wrong in asking for buildings when those in Spain starve to death.
"Perhaps he told you that we should have another war before long, by Ged, sir; or perhaps he told you that we should have a new ministry, by Ged, sir, for that those fellows are getting themselves into a mess, sir; or that those other fellows were reforming this, and cutting down that, and altering the other in the army, until, by Ged, sir, we shall have no army at all, by-and-by nothing but a pack of boys, sir, crammed up to the eyes with a lot of senseless schoolmasters' rubbish, and dressed in shell-jackets and calico helmets.
Good school-houses were not scattered over the land; nor were schoolmasters always able to teach their pupils. The school-house where the boys of this settlement went was a log-cabin, built in the midst of the woods. The schoolmaster was a strange man; sometimes good-humored, and then indulging the lads; sometimes surly and ill-natured, and then beating them severely.
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